Automation is valuable for replacing manual labour (a main goal of an RBE community), making systems more efficient and operate more effectively, and doing tasks that humans are not capable of. Automation has proven successful over the last decades (for example with washing machine in houses and robots in factories). We plan to automate as many repetitive tasks as possible (e.g. harvesting crops, maintenance, monitoring and control systems, and household chores). Future applications could include more complex automation like construction and cooking.

Open source hardware and software such as Arduino can be used for many different sensing and automation tasks. For example, sensor lights, monitoring of water levels and quality in the aquaponic fish tanks, logging of weather data, controlling and monitoring energy use and allowing remote access to technology.